


She Brings Rain

by cafenzie



Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafenzie/pseuds/cafenzie
Summary: If you've been around long enough, or come from her Tumblr page, you'll know this is just my frenzied, inexplicable writing of an original character I've held onto for years. If you fancy reading narratives to some dorky Naruto original character from (at least) seven years ago in the progressing, then by all means please read.
Kudos: 1





	She Brings Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This introduction chapter heavily includes depictions of my own ideas for how Amegakure functioned following the rise of the Akatsuki and changing leadership with Hanzo as a dictator, all of which can be summarized and found in the link below:  
> https://amehanaa.tumblr.com/tagged/%3B-Ame-headcanon

What started as a misty fog that rolled into the late afternoon transformed itself into a storm unlike any other, relentless, like all things that fell into being with the land; it too was so engraved by the underbelly mass that ran rampant. Things were not always like this. And yet they were. There had never been a time she could collectively consider things to be in a stage of enlightenment. Even sparse days when the sun winked from behind clouds; no matter how thin, it remained unseen.  She could recall standing by the edge of the lake waters, engorged and gnashing, though all the same in inviting to whomever crossed it’s path. To those who sought the beast, it was not hard to find.   
But for those who had been swallowed whole, very few remembered, and even fewer wept. 

She could not remember a time when people had forgotten the significance of words, the strength of being swallowed at least together. People had always been  _ afraid _ .

A startle wakes her, before the crippling sound of the door does. It’s her mother's footsteps that alarm her most: speedy and frenzied atop the floorboards that are on the verge of decayment or concaving all at once. She is up before she realizes it, squandering away her blanket and no longer in the field of sleep that had embraced her. Now it is all memory and practice and  _ fear  _ that bites her. With shoes on and meeting the glossy eyes of her mother’s, she only knows that it is time to go. To a different home, perhaps. And yet she cannot help but shake the instinct of feeling that where they will go is much farther than that of the plain of home they sought refuge in.  The worn and familiar face of her father does not greet her alongside the deep blue that colors her mother’s irises with fear.  
He has not come back home in two nights. Under the keen safety of a frayed wicker drawer, they roll a canvas scratched with landmarks beneath their jackets and leave out the front door without another word. 

  
  


Even crouched in the privacy of bushes, she feels watched. Not like in the marketplace or greenhouse beside her mother when people’s gazes turn sour and look away fast, chattering rumors off their tongues that she can’t hear. She feels more like the small planigales scooped up by vultures when the sky clears momentarily, or how the waders watch fish with greedy eyes. But here she is hidden, and alone. The dull embers of lanterns in the city blur past the raindrops that fall thick from the tree leaves above. She wonders where in that vast maze is her mother now, and she holds herself tighter, her own map below her shirt wrinkling as she does. The stars are close to apparating, indicating just how much time has passed since. She doesn’t want to run. But she doesn’t want to let her mother down. 

With a breath drawn white from the cold, she abides to wait just a little longer, to see if her mother will turn up like promised. It’s been since early morning that she last ate, three days since their ration cards ran cold and portions were made smaller and smaller. She can’t remember a time when eating two small meals a day  _ wasn’t  _ normal. She became good at hiding some of the nuts from the market in her pockets, or coming with her mother to work and quietly slipping a stray apple from the baskets. Despite what workers and innovators leading the greenhouse claimed, the fruit bore little to no taste. Like everything else in the city, watered down and squandered, it was flavorless. To be able to grow it was a rarity enough, however, and that alone impressed the people. Maybe that was all that mattered: that it made people  _ feel  _ better, or the fact that there was food to go around period. It wasn’t like before, when foreigners eagerly traded and bartered their delicacies and foods that were otherwise uninhabitable by the wetlands.  
That’s what her mother told her, fleeting stories that were only significant to someone who had never seen it herself. Now no one came in. 

And no one got out, either. 

The temperature at night makes it so that all indigenous creatures typically burrow below the earth or in trees, for the rain makes it too cold to bear comfortably. Even the egrets were smart enough to hide out in potholes of bushes, and pull twigs to keep the water out of their feathers when they slept. Perhaps she should do the same and stow away like a bird. She has been waiting on the ambition that her mother really will come back since dusk. And where it is now into the next day, her hope begins to fade. With a new unexpected weight, she stands from her spot high in the hills overlooking the lake’s perimeter, not wanting to turn away, but knowing she has to. It’s no longer raining, but she mistakes it as she finds herself in silent tears, weeping because she had waited just a little longer, praying that her mother had not meant it when she said to run away and follow the map if she did not come back within an hour. She would have given her all the time in the world if it meant she would step back into that field from the depths of that decayed town, instead of making her swear to leave her behind and go on. 

Like her father, she knew her mother would not get out of that diseased water-hole. None of them did. 

She would not either, not unless she ran and evaded the troops that shuffled in nearby grasses, looking for a little girl who was marked traitor. Her tears would not stop as she ran, sprinting through thickets that overlooked the main passage, unused by civilians for years. Even children knew to stay away from this area, unless they wanted to disappear. There was nothing beyond that guarded castle gate, or at least no one would say so. The most dangerous ones were those in town who would never think of leaving, who  _ wanted  _ to stay. Those who had tried couldn’t speak up, because none were left. At least none that spoke that thought aloud. They knew better. The city had ears, each piece of metal, each worker or passing guard, and even the water itself would hear. And then the water would swallow them whole. Then it would be silent. 

“Run,” her mother had said, “Run and don’t look back, not once - not at all.” 


End file.
